droga's millions

I was just looking at D&AD's four black pencil winners and discovered (for the first time) Droga 5's 'Million' project.

For the life of me I can't find a video to directly link to. But you can see it at the link above or on Droga 5's website.

It's basically an incentive scheme for less-privileged, under-performing students that rewards performance with a shiny phone. The better they do in school, the more minutes they get etc.


I love ideas like this. This is exactly the sort of way problems should be tackled - with solutions, not messages.

[I actually believe that this kind of thinking is over-lauded - mainly because it masquerades as a lateral approach to an 'advertising challenge'. In my mind it's only an advertising challenge if someone (perhaps wrongly) decides to ask for advertising. Anyway, that's an entirely different post.]

Props to Droga for actually making this happen. Coming up with ideas like this isn't the hard part. It's getting everyone on board and seeing it through. All the while dealing with the big, inevitable client question: "Will this work?"

Of course, no one knows if things like this will work. So we stand looking across the chasm of uncertainty and ask ourselves: Do we try something new which could be amazing or could equally fail? Or do we stick with something dull and safe that at least will get a few eyeballs and have a pop at some gentle psychological persuasionism?

I know which I'd rather be involved in.